Neven Jovanović

Neven Jovanović, university docent (adjunct professor) at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Classical Philology. Addres: Lučićeva 3, HR-10000 Zagreb, Croatia. E-mail: neven.jovanovic@ffzg.hr

Abstract: A digital text collection LaudationesurbiumDalmaticarum gathers and makes freely accessible and searchable 69 Latin texts by 53 authors thatwhich praised the cities of the Eastern Adriatic coast in the period 1268-1608. “Praise of cities” is any description or mention of an Eastern Adriatic city or region, in a literary text written in Latin, that can be interpreted as a compliment (or its antithesis, a criticism). The following cities and regions are praised (listed in geographical order, from North to South): Trieste, Istria, Kopar, Dalmatia, Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, Split, Brač, Hvar, Korčula, Ston, Dubrovnik, Kotor, and Shkodër. Most often praised is the city of Dubrovnik, with 32 texts in its honour. Next comes Split (10 texts). Dalmatia as a region is praised in seven texts, Istria in three. We examine therelationships of authorsʼ relationship to the cities praised and the genres of the texts, with a short discussion of the three criticisms (all directed to Dubrovnik). Finally, we show (on the example of Dalmatia, Istria, Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Split) how a simple collocations analysis revealsdiscovers the key terms pointing to universally accepted ideas about the identities of the places of the Eastern Adriatic places.

Aiming to improve our knowledge of how Renaissance civic communities were represented and imagined, in 2010 a digital collection was put together; freely available online under the title LaudationesurbiumDalmaticarum,1 the collection contains Latin texts which praise the cities of the Eastern Adriatic coast. At the moment there are 69 such documents written by 53 authors spanning over three and a half centuries (1268-1608). Here we briefly present the collection and sketch the prominent place occupied in it by the city-state of Dubrovnik, demonstrating at the same time the lines of research possible with a significant number of standardised digital texts at our disposal.

1 Introducing the collection

The hHistories of Croatian literature and culture usually qualify eight texts as “praise of Dalmatian cities” in Latin.2 These best-known laudationes will be our entry points to the collection. They are, in chronological order:

Four of these writings (1, 2, 5, 6) are prose chorographies, descriptions of regions. The description of Dubrovnik by Diversi is rich and detailed (and much used by modern historians). Texts by Šižgorić and Pribojević present their respective home towns, Šibenik and Hvar, as parts of athe broader picture; for Šižgorić it is Dalmatia, for Pribojević the whole Slavic world. The five poetic texts include Marulloʼs lyric contrast of the peace in Dubrovnik with the revolutions in Naples, and a jambic ode on Dubrovnik by Crijević, an intertextual dialogue with Marulloʼs poem.10 Crijević left also an unfinished epic DeEpidauro (573 hexameters), where a description of the city and its surroundings is combined with a story of the mythical origins of Dubrovnik. The same themes were tackled in an elegy by Didacus Pyrrhus, a Portuguese Jew living in Dubrovnik. Finally, Bolica wrote a descriptive hexameter topography of the Bay of Kotor and the city of Kotor itself.

The short list of laudationesurbium presented above called to be expanded: there are more cities on the Eastern Adriatic coast (where are Split, Trogir, Zadar?). Moreover, a working definition was also needed: what exactly do we mean by laudatiourbis?

2 Presenting the collection

For our research, a laudatio is any description or mention of an Eastern Adriatic city or region, in a literary text written in Latin, that can be interpreted as a compliment - or its antithesis, a criticism. Respective text can be long or short, whole or fragmentary. We include works which are literary only in a wider sense, such as topographies, e. g. the one of Istria by Flavio Biondo in Italiaillustrata (1448), or the passage on Dubrovnik by Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo in the Supplementumchronicharum (1483). On the other hand, we leave out official and notarial documents, praise of civic patron saints,11 as well as Croatian or Italian writings, and non-verbal material.12

The majority of the texts in the collection (62 of 69) was created between 1435 and 1608. The Latin praise of Eastern Adriatic cities seems to be at its height well after the period 1409-1420; that is, after most of the coastal cities (except for Dubrovnik) became part of the Venetian StatodaMar, and after the first Ottoman-Venetian War (1423-1430). Furthermore, a significant number of texts (32) were written between 1460 and 1525.; i It is useful to remember that 1526 is the year of the Hungarian defeat by the Ottoman forces in the Battle of Mohács, and that in 1527 Dubrovnik achieved its definitive independence from the Hungarian and Croatian king. An eighteen18-year gap, during which there were no praises that we know of, falls in 1582-1600. These are the years of relative peace in the Mediterrannean, the years when the drama of “big history” shifts elsewhere.

In geographical order, from North to South, the following cities and regions are praised: Trieste, Istria, Kopar, Dalmatia, Zadar, Šibenik, Trogir, Split, Brač, Hvar, Korčula, Ston, Dubrovnik, Kotor, and Shkodër. Most often praised is the city of Dubrovnik, with 32 texts in its honour. Next comes Split, object of praise in ten texts. Dalmatia as a region is celebrated in seven texts, Istria in three. Just once praise goes to tThe island cities of Brač, Hvar, and Korčula have a single praise each, as well as Shkodër, anto the unhappy city in the Venetian Albania, Shkodër, taken by the Ottomans in 1479.

Authors

As said before, there are 53 authors in the collection. By their origin and residence, they fall into four groups. Twenty-eight of them are native citizens of the Eastern Adriatic cities, from medieval authors such as Thomas the Archdeacon of Split (c. 1200-1268)13 to late Renaissance versifiers Nikola Tihić (NicolausTranquillus) and Ivan Krstitelj Divnić (IohannesBaptistaDiphnicus) from Šibenik (both writing in 1608). This group comprises also people from Eastern Adriatic shore who celebrated not only their home towns, but other cities; they are therefore simultaneously locals and strangers, insiders and outsiders. One of these is Thomas the Archdeacon, whose history includes passages on Zadar and Dubrovnik. Around 1464 Raffaele Zovenzoni from Trieste, who taught at Koper, addressed an epigram to Jacopo Antonio Marcello, praising there the city of Split—precisely, its sacellum/QuodtenetAspalatumdelitiisquefovet, which Zovenzoni considers to be more important than all the worldʼs architectural wonders.14 In 1469 Zovenzoniʼs friend from Šibenik, Juraj Šižgorić, honoured Trieste. In 1475 Dubrovnik is admired by Koriolan Cipiko from Trogir, in his PetriMoceniciimperatorisgestorumlibriIII;15 Cipikoʼs qualification of difference between the aristocracy and the commoners of Dubrovnik, Patriciisolirempublicamadministrant,plebstantumsuisrebusstudet:depublicisminimecuriosaest, will be included almost literally in the later accounts by Foresti and Barleti. An expatriate, Marin Barleti, who left his native Shkodër for Venice, presented praise of Dubrovnik in a speech of a character in his life of Skanderbeg (1508). Thirty years later, in 1538, Dubrovnik was admired by Nikola Petrović from Korčula; coming to Dubrovnik to serve as a rectorscholarum infor the twelve years 1538-1550, Petrović saw the city as a republic flourishing under the rule of best possible laws.16 After the middle of the century, in 1567, Ilija Tolimerić from Šibenik celebrated Split in an elegy directed to its senatuspopulusque, and another elegy, praising Trogir and its famous sons, was written around 1604 by Ivan Pridojević from Skradin.

The second group consists of foreigners employed in Adriatic cities. There are ten such authors. Regularly they taught in public schools or otherwise. Besides Diversi, there were the Franciscan Juraj Dragišić, active in Dubrovnik both as a preacher and a private teacher 1495-1500;17 Palladio Fosco from Padova, writing in 1504-1509, taught in Trogir, Zadar, and Koper; Nardino Celinese from Maniago in Friuli, magisterpublicus in Zadar c. 1508-1521; Nascimbene Nascimbeni from Ferrara, rector of the Dubrovnik public school in the 1560s.18 Otherwise employed were Perceval of Fermo, podestà of Split and codifier of its statute in 1312; Giovanni Conversini of Ravenna, chief notary in Dubrovnik 1384-87; Leonardo Montagna, in 1461-1467 an associate of the archbishop of Split Lorenzo Zane; Lodovico Beccadelli, the archbishop of Dubrovnik 1555-1560, and his secretary Antonio Giganti from Fossombrone (1535-1598). By origin, most foreign authors were Italians—except for Dragišić and the Portuguese Jew Didacus Pyrrhus.

In tThe third group includesthere are fourteen foreigners not professionally engaged on the Eastern Adriatic coast. Some were travellers, like Ciriaco dʼAncona, who visited Zadar, Korčula, and Dubrovnik during his epigraphic expeditions in 1435-1436.19 Others never visited Dalmatia: Flavio Biondo, Francesco Filelfo and his eldest son Giovanni Mario, Aldo Manuzio and his son Aldo Manuzio il Giovane, the French political philosopher Jean Bodin, the Dutch classical scholar Justus Lipsius. It must be noted that, with the exception of Ciriaco, non-residents praise exclusively Dubrovnik.

Genres

There are 32 texts in verse. Poetic genres represented are those often encountered in humanist literary communication, mostly epigrams and elegies.20 There are a couple of verse epistles, such as Nardino Celineseʼs DesituJadręCarmenadMariumvatemceleberrimumstudiisBartholomeiAluianiducisVenetorum (1508), and Didacus Pyrrhus AdPaulum, in hexameter (1563). Two additionalmore shorter hexameter poems are ithe AdGeorgiumBizantium:Ascrivium by Ludovik Paskalić (before 1551), qualified as a silva, and a LaudatioSpalati by Ilija Tolimerić (before 1567). Remarkably few poems—the odes by Marullo and Crijević, as well as two further Crijevićʼs texts21—are in lyric metres.

There are four epic poems. Three of them are about Dubrovnik, and two of whichthose were composed by Giovanni Mario Filelfo, who, seems in 1470, seems to have improvised his own myth of the cityʼs origin, in prose and poetry of the Ragusaeis,22 based very loosely on Miletiusʼ history and the ChroniclesofthePriestofDoclea. Later, in 1476, bearing a grudge (apparently the Ragusaeis wasseems not to have been received in Dubrovnik as warmly as the author hoped), Filelfo sketched an ominous and slightly vindictive picture of the city menaced by the Ottomans:

It is possible that Ilija Crijević offered his DeEpidauro to his fellow citizens in 1505 (stating modestly in the introduction proderitmehocuobisemendandioperisgratiapriusquampubliceturrecitasse) with the intention to outdo Filelfo.

A prominent prose genre for praising cities is athe dedicatory letter, a preface to a book. The eEarliest example of such praise are the dedications to three of Aldo Manuzioʼs editions from 1498, editionesprincipes of Aristophanes, early Christian poets, and Demosthenes. The dedicatory letters are addressed to Daniele Clario from Parma, who was at the time employed as school teacher in Dubrovnik; at appropriate places Manuzio referred to inclytaistaurbsalumnavirorumnobiliumEpidaurus,cuinuncRhacusaeestnomen. In a slightly different vein, and almost seventy years later (in 1564), Nascimbene Nascimbeni dedicated his own commentary on Ciceroʼs Deinventione explicitly to the Senate of Dubrovnik, citing respectfully the cityʼs virtues: splendornobilitatisuestraefulgentissimus,antiquitasgentis,celebritasreipublicae,resauobispraeclarissimeterramariquegestae,demumplurimaenobiliumfamiliae.

In the tradition of Thucydidesʼ Pericles and Leonardo Bruniʼs LaudatioFlorentinaeurbis, a classical occasion for praising a city is athe funerary oration. Speaking at the funeral of Ivan Gučetić, Ilija Crijević reminds the citizens of the glory of Dubrovnik and Illyria: nampatriaestcaputIlluriaeinsinuAdriaticosecunda(Venetisenimsemperprimaspartestribuo). In the same speech Crijević discusses legendary origins of the city: HoctamenexnostrisannalibusetvetustatismemoriaeruimusEpidauroaVandaliseversahucilloscivesmigrasse;moxetiamRomanosadIlluriamrecuperandamBellumregemsecutos.24

Ten texts belong to historiography or biography. In three of them, praise of cities is part of a monograph about a person (Skanderbeg, Mocenigo, Marulić), and one is an autobiography (by Giovanni Conversini from Ravenna). Two texts describe sieges (of Shkodër and Korčula). Three texts are histories on a larger scale. OnlyJust one text is an essay on the origourbis (Ludovik Crijević Tuberoʼs CommentariolusdeorigineetincrementourbisRhacusanae, based on a chapter from his Commentariidetemporibussuis).25 Eight texts are chorographies, either of Dalmatia or of Istria; only the earliest one is concerned with a single island (Brač, as described by Dujam Hranković in 1405).

A special medium for praising cities is anthe inscription. Ciriaco dʼAncona drafted two classicizing inscriptions for public works in Dubrovnik c. 1436, and—in a similar vein—styled a trade agreement between Dubrovnik and Ancona as a sanctio from Roman times, using the formulaic language of ancient inscriptions.26 Moreover, Marko Marulić decided to include a description of Diocletianʼs palace in his antiquarian collection Inepigrammatapriscorumcommentarius (1503-1510).

Finally, two prose texts are internationally influential praises because of their authors. When Jean Bodin described Dubrovnik in his LesSixlivresdelaRépublique (1576, with a revised and expanded Latin translation by the author in 1586), qualifying the city-state as small, but successful, he added considerably to its repute.27 A letter sent in 1601 by Justus Lipsius to Franciscus Maria Sagri in Dubrovnik, in a gesture of courtesy towards a person Lipsius did not know personally, contained an informed praise of his addresseeʼs home: Ragusia...nobilisRespublica,etquaeBarbariamanobisdividit;legibusetmoribuspolita. When the letter was included in the Operaomnia of the Dutch scholar, this private praise became public.

Criticisms

Dubrovnik, the most praised of the Eastern Adriatic cities, was also the only one to attract vituperationes, criticisms. The first one was written by Giovanni Conversini, who c. 1384 found the city intellectually unstimulating: etlitterarumususnullusetingenianonelimatastudiis...Nullahicingeniisubtiliorisofficina...Ventriuiuunt,tegietpascisummumest.28

The second vituperatio, written by a local author, was deliberately ambiguous; furthermore, thanks to repeated modern editorial misinterpretations, it was not recognized as a criticism until relatively recently times. It is the famous ode by Ilija Crijević Ocellemi,Ragusa,ocellemi,patria (7, 1), sung from the febriculosaarx, “fever-ridden fort” of Ston, where the city-state “allows [the author] to wither and not to die”, “by its singular good-will restoring Ilija to itself and to himself”.29 Earlier understood as an expression of sincere patriotism, the ode has lately been persuasively read as “an ironic reaction of a cosmopolitan intellectual to a tedious military duty forced upon him by his home town”30 (c. 1495 athe thirty-year-old Crijević, back from his studies in Italy, had to serve as athe commander of the fort in the malaria-infested Ston).

Another noble Crijević from Dubrovnik, the Benedictine Ludovik Crijević Tubero (d. after 1532), composed around 1520 a CommentariolusdeorigineetincrementourbisRhacusanae. There he hit sharply at the very source of self-esteem among Dubrovnik aristocracy:

3 Collocating the praise

Any collection, and especially a digital one, invites synthesis more than analysis. What do the texts gathered there have in common, can trends be discerned? Here we will illustrate the synthetic approach by a simple search for collocations, finding which words tend to collocate with the names of the citiesoccur frequently near names of cities.32

First let us give some information on the names; details can be found in Table 3. There are 353 occurrences for Dalmatia, 331 for Istria. Among the cities, the outlier is Dubrovnik. Under all its names (Ragusa,Ragusium,Ragusion,Epidaurus,Dubraunia,Dubrovnik), as well as in respective ortographical variants, adjective derivatives, and toponymics, it is mentioned no less than 964 times. After Dubrovnik there follow Hvar (Pharus,Pharia,Lesina), mentioned 118 times (but the names can signify both the island and the city), then Split (Spalatum,Spaletum,Aspalatum,Aspalatum), whose names occur 91 times, and Šibenik (Sibenicum,Sicum), occurring 63 times. The dominance of Dubrovnik does not surprise if we remember that 32 texts are dedicated to it; still, compared to other two most frequently named placenames, the frequency ratio of over 9:1 is impressive.

Cityorregion

Occurrences

Dubrovnik

964

Dalmatia

353

Istria

331

Hvar

118

Split

91

Šibenik

63

Kotor

47

Zadar

46

Trogir

44

Skadar

41

Pula

40

Kopar

35

Korčula

33

Trst

32

Brač

29

Table 1: The number of times the objects of praise are named in the collection
Comparison of collocations for Dalmatia and Istria turns up one significant difference. AccompanyingNear the names of Istria we find seven times urbs and urbes, and only four times civitates, while close to the names of Dalmatia civitas is encountered 25 times, urbs 21 times. This seems an echo of the humanistsʼ debate on urbs and civitas, when, at the beginning of the Quattrocento, Leonardo Bruni translated Greek polis with Latin civitas, understanding it as athe city created from the political partnership entered into consensually between free citizens, while an urbs consists of buildings encircled by walls. There are more civitates in Dalmatia than in Istria.33

Regarding cities, the treatment of names of Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Split reveals significant differences in the perception and presentation of these places (lists of collocations are in tables 2-4). Such differences may be well known from previous research, but now we are able to confirm, in hitherto unexplored scope, that they wereare present and formulated (already) in the Latin praises in the periodduring 1268-1608.

The glory of Split and Hvar rests on ancient roots of the settlements. Hvar is strongly connected with its ruler Demetrius of Pharos (the rex from late 3rd century BC), Split with the Roman colony Salona, its destruction, and the emperorʼs palace (but the name of Diocletian himself does not occur near the name of Split).34 Claims to ancient glory are supported by quotations from ancient sources; this explains frequent occurrences of verbadicendi (dicere,inquit,vocare,nuncupari; dictio in the meaning of “vocabulary entry”; the relative quemadmodum-35) and names of Strabo, Pliny, Polybius. Both Split and Hvar are named near the forms of nobilis, which is the epithetonornans in praising a city. However, Split occurs near the forms of civitas 27 times, and Hvar never - though we find its names five times near urbs, four times near munitissima “well fortified”, and 18 times near insula.

Dubrovnik, on the other hand, is celebrated for its politics. It is clearly an autonomous republic: in proximity to its names senatus occurs 49 times (elsewhere in the collection it is used mainly in collocation with the names of Venice)36, principatus 19 times (always in de Diversiʼs text, as his idiosyncratic technical term), auctoritas and respublicaseven times, patres, praetores and tyrannus six times each (tyrannus is anthe antithesis to Dubrovnikʼs liberarespublica). The cityʼs names are collocated withnear civitas (43 times), urbs (31) and cives (16), as well as withnear words describing supremacy and domination (dictio, imperium, domini)—and withnear mercatura and moenia. Though we encounter Dubrovnik also near the words for antiquity (antiquus, vetus and origo), names co-occurring with it suggest more modern setting: Dalmatia (11 times), Veneti (9), Slauini (7).

If these findings seem to be commonplace and somewhat bland, it is so because they were meant to be. First, we follow the cities of the Eastern Adriatic coast through athe period when they are trying to use literature—in our case, Latin literature—to fashion their civic identities, but from our point of view this process is completed, the notions have already entered the collective memory, they already are self-evident. Second, our collocation analysis tried to identify a common ground, the consensus, a set of universally acceptable ideas about a cityʼs identity; what has necessarily been left out of the analysis is the individual, both as a single text which can have significant influence (cf. the wide reach and reception of one ode on Dubrovnik by Michele Marullo), and as a work of art which transforms universally accepted ideas in a unique way (cf. again Marulloʼs ode, where the peaceful prosperity of Dubrovnik is achieved through the Scylla and Charybdis of the Turks and the Venetians, contrary to a tumultuous Naples,37 or Crijevićʼs web of intertextual and mythological ambiguities in the ode Ocellemi,Ragusa). But the space for richer and more complex interpretations of the unique opens only onceafter we have surveyed and understood the ground shared by authors who praised the Eastern Adriatic cities.

1It is a subset of the digital collection CroatiaeauctoresLatini, ed. Neven Jovanović et al., Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, www.ffzg.unizg.hr/klafil/croala. The texts, some digitized from older and not easily accessible editions, others in new scholarly editions, are encoded according to TEI XML standard, and deployed by PhiloLogic, a full-text search, retrieval and analysis system.

2For a standard overview of Dalmatian humanism see Ilʼja Golenishchev-Kutuzov, IlRinascimentoitalianoeleletteratureslavedeisecoliXVeXVI. Milano: Vita e pensiero, 1973. There are praises in Croatian and Italian as well. The most famous laudatio in Croatian is the poem UpohvalugradaDubrovnika (c. 1520) by Hanibal Lucić from Hvar (1485-1553). An interesting praise of Split in Italian, by Antonio Proculiano from Bar, was printed in Venice in 1567: Orationealclarissimom.GiovanBattistaCalbodegnissimorettor,etallamagnificacomunitadiSpalato. Proculianoʼs speech follows the model of Bruniʼs praise of Florence.

10Didacus Pyrrhus, composing his AdPaulum in 1563, will also mention Marulloʼs ode: DecantataboninumerisRacusaMarulli.

11The borderline case here is the hendecasyllabic AdsanctumBlasiumproRhacusa by Ilija Crijević. We decided to include the poem because of the impressive list of Dubrovnikʼs sources of wealth recommended for St Blaiseʼs protection: Rhacusam,Genitor,solomarique/Deuotamtibisospitemtuere,/Agros,oppida,rura,templa,classem,/Vectigalianostra,lucra,merces/QuaeuectanturabultimisBritannis,/QuasBizantiamissitatPropontis,/QuasseptemgeminifluentaNili,/EuropaatqueAsia,Affricumquelittus/Diuersoproculorbesumministrant (Criijević, c. 3, 5, 10-18).

12The non-verbal material would comprise visual symbols such as communal seals, coats of arms, paintings; also music, social rituals, etc.

20Four epigrams, all connected with Dubrovnik, praise lesser parts of the city-state: its important fort Ston (Crijević, 1, 20-22 DeStagnooppidoRagusaeo, c. 1495), and Lopud (Insuampatriamencomiasticon written by Petar Palikuća before 1601).

21Both in hendecasyllable: the AdsanctumBlasiumproRhacusa (c. 3, 5) that we mentioned already, and RhacusamfurisAeliumqueuatem... (4, 20), which informs us about another praise of Dubrovnik, written by someone from Trogir: HincmePhocidosautumasparentem/Rhacusam,Illyricidecus,canisque/Turresaereas,superbacultu/EtCyclopeasaxaductibusque/Riuosmarmoreisscaturientes,/QualesMartiauirgouixrecuset,/Etmiraculafontiumrecenses/Rhacusaeetproceresdiutogatos./Necliberrimaiuraconticescis,/Mollesdelicias,amoenaTempe... (Crijević, c. 4, 20, 9-18).

27Ragusia,ciuitatumfereomniumquaesuntinEuropaminima...CertequidemhaecRespublica,omniumquasaccepimus,purissimametabomnipopularitemperationeremotissimamAristocratiamcolit. On the role of Bodin in “promoting the myth regarding Ragusan achievements” see Susan Mosher Stuard, Astateofdeference:Ragusa/Dubrovnikinthemedievalcenturies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992: pp. 212-213. Mosher Stuard quotes Bodin in contemporary English translation; she usually disregards Latin texts.

28“They have no use for scholarship, they do not educate their minds... Here there is no place for exercising a more refined talent... They live for their stomachs, the main thing is to be covered and fed.”

30Novaković, »Autografi Ilije Crijevića, I«: p. 16. Crijević himself knew how to play down the irony, citing only first four verses of his ode in the funeral oration for his uncle Junius de Sorgo (i. e. Sorkočević, d. 1509).

31“I do not wish to follow stories made up by others, nor will I myself make new ones to help ennoble this town by more illustrious origins; absolutely no nobility can be provided for a city which shuns war, which is devoted exclusively to commerce. No, I will make known everything as it either truly is, or can be truthfully approximated”. This is somewhat similar to Conversiniʼs earlier judgement nobilemesseatquelocupletem,hiclocimodicediffert, “here there is not much difference between being noble and being rich”.

32In each case the search system counted co-occurrences within five words on either side of the queried term; the results were later lemmatized. Searches and results are documented and made replicable on the following internet address: www.ffzg.unizg.hr/klafil/dokuwiki/doku.php/z:croala-laudationes.

34The fact that a term does not occur, or occurs less frequently, within five words of the query, does not mean that the connection was not made. Most authors writing about Split knew well that the palace belonged to Diocletian. But the relationship between Split and Diocletian was of such nature that it cannot have been easily explained within the five-words range; it was not seen as self-evident.

35Quemadmodum in introducing quotations is an almost exclusive feature of Vinko Pribojevićʼs oration; while Pribojević uses it 65 times, in eight other authors that have it the relative occurs just 15 times.

37Marullo, vv. 38-44: Cummoremeturbissępeanimosacra/Totiuramecumcogito,cumdecus/Pulchramquelibertatemauorum/Perpetuaserieretentam//InterqueThurcasetVenetumasperum/EtinquietaeregnaNeapolis/VixqualisAetneoprofundo/Vndafretinatataestuosi? “... as often as I think about morals and about all the sacred laws of the city, about the splendor and the beautiful liberty of its forefathers, the liberty which was kept continually, between the Turks, the Venetianʼs harshness, the restless rule of Naples, nothing less than a tidal wave flowing from the deep below the Etna”.